Are Teen Rehabilitation Centers Important?

Addiction is a problem that needs to be addressed with the help of medical and mental health professionals. A teen rehab center is a place where any addict will be treated with care and dignity. You can therefore be sure that you or your loved one will receive the best possible care for individual recovery needs. Inpatient treatment provides a safety net for addicts because the temptations of the outside world are not available. It is also important to remember that no one is alone in recovery.

Teenage rehab facilities are well aware of the needs of their patients and adapt treatment programs for each individual patient.

The Residential Treatment offers a comprehensive, clinically-based treatment option for teens and their families struggling with mental health and/or substance abuse issues.  The residential facilities exhibit a quiet and supportive environment.  Length of stay is 45 to 90 days approx. to help the teens with addictions return to happy, productive, and healthy lives.

But how important are such centers in helping addicted teenagers?

“I started using drugs when I was 13,” says former addict Dominic Ruffy. “My friends were starting to drink beer, but I didn’t like it so I started smoking weed at a party.

“Within six weeks it had become a daily thing and it progressed to LSD in the same year, then ecstasy. By 16, I was snorting cocaine every day – I funded the whole thing by stealing from my parents.”

Mr Ruffy, now 37, later moved on to crack and heroin before he finally entered a rehab centre five years ago – but he remembers those first years of addiction well.

His parents sought help from a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, but he says if residential care had been available to him early on, his addiction might not have escalated as far as it did. “I ended up on crack and heroin. Had I had an intervention in my teenage years, I probably wouldn’t have done.

“You have to be taken out of the equation, really, and put somewhere where you’re sober, and sober for a period of time.

Mr Ruffy is now the spokesperson for a group campaigning to keep residential treatment centers open.

He admits that community outpatient programmes can be very effective but says, for those who need it, rehabilitation is getting harder to access – no matter what an addict’s age.

The role of family is a vital aspect in every teen’s recovery.